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Christine Peters. Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 389 pp. $70.00
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-58062-5.
Reviewed by Colleen Seguin (Department of History, Valparaiso University)
Published on H-Catholic (February, 2006)
Did Women Have a Reformation?
votional trends–such as Christocentric piety–and to her
analysis of the importance of exemplars of superior moral
conduct, who served as “patterns” suitable for late medieval and early modern Christians’ emulation. Part 1
of the text addresses a variety of topics important to understanding the late medieval world: religious roles and
choices, the Virgin Mary and Christocentric devotion,
the saints, and Eve and the responsibility for sin. Part 2
ranges broadly across the Reformation era and discusses
religious change; parish religion; the godly woman; the
Virgin Mary and the saints; renewal of interest in the
Old Testament; martyrs; Adam; and marriage. Of this
lengthy list of topics, Peters’s analyses of the roles of the
Virgin Mary and the saints in both personal piety and
parish life, and her discussion of marriage stand out as
particularly provocative.
Thirty years ago, John Bossy famously declared that
the English Reformation was not designed with women
in mind.[1] In his view, the loss of women’s functions
in rituals, the criminalization of the cloister, and Protestantism’s bibliocentric nature in an era of high levels of
female illiteracy meant that the process of religious reform offered little to women. Although Bossy’s work was
by no means intended as a history of Catholic women,
his passing comments are widely cited as evidence of the
Reformation’s negative impact on them. Furthermore,
conventional wisdom holds that women mourned the absence of Mary and the female saints in the new religion
(p. 1). Christine Peters’s exhaustively researched book
examines the same question, “How did the era of religious reform affect women? ” However, Peters reaches
markedly different conclusions. Deeming the view that
the Reformation entailed a “loss” for women a “gross
oversimplification” (p. 169), her analysis of the rise of
Protestantism and its effect on both women and ideas of
gender emphasizes continuity and downplays the novelty of Protestantism (p. 7). Peters argues that women did
not experience the Reformation as a sea change. Rather,
late medieval English parishioners already had developed
forms of Christocentric piety that had much in common
with later Protestantism. Christocentric devotion thus
served as a comforting “bridge” in a time of spiritual ferment, enabling many Catholics to make a smooth transition to Protestantism (pp. 3-4).
Peters argues that late medieval parishes already had
begun to de-emphasize Mary and the female saints before the official process of religious reform even began.
Thus the Reformation entailed no “loss” of these female
figures of sanctity. Increasing late medieval focus on the
adult Christ and His Passion changed views of the Virgin
Mary, curtailing her intercessory powers, downplaying
her maternal identity, and emphasizing her role as a witness to Jesus’ suffering (pp. 4, 96, 62). Furthermore, Peters asserts that Mary retained a greater role in English
Protestantism than typically is assumed, with Protestants
redefining her importance as an exemplar rather than
Peters’s focus on “patterns of piety” operates on two an intercessor. Peters’s analyses of wills, churchwarlevels. The phrase refers both to her concern with de- dens’ accounts, and paintings on rood screens and church
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walls lead her to reject “biological essentialism,” which
assumes that women were more drawn to female saints
and men to male ones (p. 97). She disputes the claim that
the role of the female saints was a religious issue of special concern to women. Peters argues that in their roles
as “pattern[s] for emulation” saints like Mary Magdalen
who served “as representatives of the weaker vessel, offered the clearest way of visualising the possibility of the
sanctification of ordinary mortals” (p. 128); such a message was not one “which could be read only by women”
(p. 129). In her view, saints were “humanised” in the
late middle ages and their roles as intercessors declined
in significance while their roles as religious role models (“patterns of piety”) increased in importance. Peters’s
interpretation of the late medieval cult of the saints differs sharply from that of Eamon Duffy, who portrays the
saints’ intercessory powers as paramount to their significance and downplays their roles as exemplars (pp. 99,
102). In short, Peters argues that although Protestants
rejected the abuse of the saints as “idols,” they did not
eschew the use of them as role models.
and propensity to sin, paved the way for a more subtle understanding of gender in the early modern period”
(p. 349) and “defined the christian (and hence the laity)
in female terms” (p. 348). Because early modern people assumed that women were “weaker vessels,” “exemplary godly women became even more worthy of praise
and emulation,” a boon for Protestant Englishwomen (p.
197). Furthermore, the crucial role of the female Protestant martyrs “ameliorated” women’s position in Protestantism (p. 292). Peters concludes that “the threat that
protestantism would strengthen the discipline of patriarchy was therefore averted” (p. 348), a claim likely to
evoke comment and critique from family historians.
This ambitious book is the product of a prodigious
amount of research. Peters’s sources include: funeral
sermons, mystery plays, popular literature, ballads, wall
paintings, stained glass, woodcut illustrations, church
seating, embroidery, and girls’ names. She is especially
careful to take seriously the material culture of parish life.
The text is filled with fascinating discussions of a variety
of topics, notably early modern Protestants’ interest in
the apocryphal life of Susanna.
Like her arguments about the roles that Mary and the
female saints played in the lives of late medieval and early
modern women, Peters’s views on “godly marriage” fly
in the face of much conventional wisdom. She portrays
the sexual politics of texts such as the clergyman William
Gouge’s well-known Of Domesticall Duties (1622) in a
more positive light than many scholars might. Emphasizing reciprocity, Peters asserts “that the idea of wifely
obedience or subjection was” significant in Puritan advice literature, “but that it could be understood in a way
that was more acceptable and less one-sided than historians often assume. It does not need to be seen in terms of
misogynistic oppression,… but rather as part of a balance
of duties” (p. 326). Calling for “a more careful reading”
of Gouge and similar writers, she argues that “although
such authors defined authority in very gendered terms,
they were much more open to the idea that characteristics of behaviour were not gendered” (p. 332).
Three elements of Peters’s work would benefit from
further development. First, the use of the term “gender”
needs to be theorized. Second, the study would have been
enhanced by engagement with Frances Dolan’s work
on Catholicism and gender in seventeenth-century print
culture.[2] Peters acknowledges that–given the influence
of the Catholic Henrietta Maria–the 1630s were “an unusual period” (p. 242) in the history of English people’s
attitudes towards Mary, but she could have devoted more
attention to how that era complicates her assessment of
Mary’s changing role in English religious culture. Finally, it is difficult to account persuasively for the existence of female recusancy through Peters’s thoughtprovoking analysis of early modern women, gender, and
religion. As she points out, one can explain the predominance of women on lists of recusants as an effect
of Catholic families’ legal strategies, because it was less
risky for women to be presented for recusancy since they
were held less accountable than men for their religious
nonconformity. Peters further argues that “the fact that
women are seen primarily as the tenacious defenders
of catholicism rather than protestantism mainly reflects
the fact that officially supported anti-catholicism lasted
longer” (p. 156). But these assertions do not engage at the
level of religious belief the question of why some women
were (or became) recusants. If the appeal of Christocentric piety smoothed the path to reform for so many, why
did others reject that path and risk persecution to do so?
For Peters, the writings of Gouge and his colleagues
provide the final pieces of evidence necessary to argue
that women did indeed have a Reformation. Like men,
“their experience of it could be shaped by their gender roles; but as important in determining receptivity
were the local and personal contours of catholic piety”
(p. 169). In Peters’s view, the surprising origins of this
Reformation lay in the Christocentric emphasis of late
medieval Catholicism, which “paradoxically … in reducing the religious significance of gender, and in attaching it more closely to a view of general human frailty
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Notes
[2]. Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture
[1]. John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, (Ithaca, New York and London: Cornell University Press,
1570-1850 (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1975), 1999), particularly chapter 3, “The Command of Mary:
p. 158.
Marian Devotion, Henrietta Maria’s Intercessions, and
Catholic Motherhood.”
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at:
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Citation: Colleen Seguin. Review of Peters, Christine, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval
and Reformation England. H-Catholic, H-Net Reviews. February, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11402
Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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